The social model of disability is a framework in opposition to the medical model of disability. The social model defines disability as separate from impairment. While people may experience various impairments, they only become disabilities when society is designed in a way that excludes and oppresses those individuals. In this framework, an impairment is a bodily or cognitive difference, while a disability is the exclusion a person experiences when society is built for only one type of body or mind.
To give a basic example, you can take left-handedness. Under a medical model, left-handedness could be seen as something to be diagnosed and “fixed”, as it was historically. The social model means designing society such that being left- or right- handed is essentially irrelevant to one’s life. For example, by ensuring phones have both left- and right- handed modes. It also means this isn’t something that a certain segment of the population had to be diagnosed with or seek accommodations for - society simply stopped seeing one way as “normal” and now works for everyone.
While left-handedness is a classic example of an impairment that is no longer considered a disability, there are many others far from reaching that status. Of particular note to myself, society is still very neuronomative rather than deigned to embrace neurodiversity.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.